This is part of The Pile, a partial archive of some open source mailing lists and newsgroups.
To: svlug@svlug.org
Date: Sun, 31 Dec 2000 14:41:43 -0800
From: J C Lawrence <claw@kanga.nu>
Subject: [svlug] Kensington TurboRing USB trackball, GPM, and a 2.2.18 kernel.
Simply, it works as a USB device just fine using a 2.2.18 kernel. I
haven't tried other kernel versions yet.
Comments on the device:
For pictures etc see:
http://www.kensington.com/products/pro_mic_d1300.html
Its a fairly typical asymetic 3 button trackball with a large ball
and a scroll-wheel-like "turboring" surrounding the trackball.
ObNote: I'm not fond of scrollwheels in the first place, but the
grainy cheap plastic feel of the turboring is particularly
unpleasant.
The trackball has the typical unpleasantly slippery feel of
optical trackballs. The ball is quite light and the rolling
friction is high enough that it can't be "spun" to a location
(spin the ball rapidly in a direction and then "catch" it when the
pointer gets to the right place). There's also a problem with the
trackball periodically not reporting horizontal motion (causing
the pointer to seem to "stick"). I suspect thsi is a defect in
this particular trackball hwoever, and not typical of the
product.line.
After that configuring the device under a 2.2.18 kernel and XFree86
v4.0.1 (Debian) as per the guide at:
http://www.linux-usb.org/USB-guide/book1.html
worked fine, tho I made a slight modification in that I first set up
GPM (IMPS2 device pointed at /dev/input/mice), and then setup
libsvga and XFree86 pointed at the GPM repeater.
Setting up various X apps as per
http://www-sop.inria.fr/koala/colas/mouse-wheel-scroll/
Also worked well (tho I haven't tried XEmacs yet).
Controlling the direction of the turboring (which was was "up") is
just a matter of reversing the button assignments in XF86Config-4
among the following two lines.
Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
Option "ZAxisMapping" "5 4"
Summary: Its being returned this afternoon and I'm happily returning
to my 6 button Mouse-Trak Evolution:
http://www.mousetrak.com/evolutio.htm
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